This week I've been working on a plugin that enables a different set of movements on the sketchup camera. Its very untested in its current state so I'm not so confident to release it, but below I've added a video of it in action. The current controls are:

Leftmouse + drag: controls the direction of the cameraUp/Down/Left/Right: moves the camera forward and back (parallel to the camera direction) and left and right (perpendicular to the camera direction)Home/End: Moves the camera up and down (perpendicular to the camera direction)Shift/Control: Adjusts the FOV of the camera

You'll have to forgive the unusual keyboard layout as these are the only sketchup key constants I'm comfortable will work with the plugin. I'm writing it alongside some input remappers for the 5th/6th gen console controllers so the unusual keyboard layout can be rewired.

Currently I'm working on a Turbo feature that will speed up the camera's velocity whilst also adjusting the FOV for that almost cliche gears of war/mass effect type running effect, and I'm also adding some modifiers to control the camera inertia(friction really), camera speed, and toggle keys.

I'd like to know what camera movements you guys think are lacking from Sketchup? And if you're interested, what changes you'd make to the features I've currently got.

thanks for your time-niall

Update 27-02-2011

Afternoon All,

I've been hard at work on the Floating Camera for the last week, focusing on Camera Collision, Gravity (maintaining eye height), Camera Roll & FOV changes and User Customisation in controls and the camera settings. Its been a very long week! Below is a rough draft showing off the camera features I've been working on. At the end there is also an example of Floating Camera -> Camera Recorder work flow.

There's still some bugs to work out before the release, and I need to reduce its load on the computer to an acceptable level. A beta release shouldn't be far off though.

I've got to apologise for the lateness of the updates. Working on the load instructor mixin for the tool has delayed the release somewhat, and I've got some uni studies to focus on in the meantime. It looks like I'll have about 2-3 more weeks before I can return my focus to this plugin. I hope that I get some free time sooner rather than later and that Google don't release a similar plugin in the meantime

-niall

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Last edited by bentleykfrog on Sat Oct 15, 2011 2:35 am, edited 5 times in total.

Chris Fullmer wrote:I'd like for it to be able to keep a specified distance above the ground. I know there possible problems involved of it jumping up and down over objects, but I think the good would outweigh the bad.

Chris

Nice idea, I like this, and I think it would be quite useful to get a better walkthrough experience especially since most models in sketchup are designed with the human body in mind, and humans can't exactly float in the air.

I think applying a set height should be easy, I just need to work out a vector distance from the camera point directly down to any intersecting faces and toggle this on and off when an intersection is found. I think, though, this might not work without camera collision, otherwise you might end up in some tricky situations underneath stairs. I'll look into this further.

PS. I should've mentioned that I used Camera Recorder to produce the youtube clip, sorry Chris, will edit to say so.

I've been hard at work on the Floating Camera for the last week, focusing on Camera Collision, Gravity (maintaining eye height), Camera Roll & FOV changes and User Customisation in controls and the camera settings. Its been a very long week! Below is a rough draft showing off the camera features I've been working on. At the end there is also an example of Floating Camera -> Camera Recorder work flow.

There's still some bugs to work out before the release, and I need to reduce its load on the computer to an acceptable level. A beta release shouldn't be far off though.

Looking great! Much better than my own humble experiments. Can't wait to try it. It's however a little hard to see how it performs in the video. Is the small jerkyness in movements also present without screen recording software?I especially liked when the camera walked down the stairs. I though I saw some damping in the movement.And I guess we will see a lot of camera rolls in the near future...

Pixero wrote:It's however a little hard to see how it performs in the video. Is the small jerkyness in movements also present without screen recording software?

There's two issues causing the jerkyness in the movements. The first was the screen recording software that I used. I'll have to play around with some encoders until I get something acceptable. The second issue is the script itself. I've been putting off optimising the code until now and there are a few measures that I can try to improve the performance of the script. There's also some boundingbox degrading that Sketchup does naturally when you modify the Sketchup.max_draw_time to something below what your system can handle, but I haven't been able to replicate this when the script is running.

Pixero wrote:I especially liked when the camera walked down the stairs. I though I saw some damping in the movement.

Heh, thanks. The unusual way that the camera walks down the stairs in the video is due to the speed set on the camera (20km/h). This speed is equivalent to a quick jog down the stairs so you see some unusual movements at this speed. I've noticed that in some video games the camera moves up stairs even faster than this, and I think they use some hidden smooth ramp to make sure the camera moves in a nice fashion. I'll have to modify some of the dampening to mirror this, but its a bit complex.

If you could then have ability to focus on a point or selected object or just the center to the screen and orbit about it at a fixed radius, that would be very useful .... like what what can be done in Google Earth with the Shift-Alt-left-arrowkey or Shift-Alt-right-arrowkey combinations.

Wow looks great. Although not tested yet I have a question already: is it possible to include a "flightpath" ? So a predefined camera path.

For instance when you want to walk through several rooms it is hard to move around nicely with only the keyboard keys. But if you draw a line at the desired eyeheight which the camera has to follow this would be easier.

If you could then have ability to focus on a point or selected object or just the center to the screen and orbit about it at a fixed radius, that would be very useful .... like what what can be done in Google Earth with the Shift-Alt-left-arrowkey or Shift-Alt-right-arrowkey combinations.

Good suggestion, that would be a cool feature to have. In this release I'm just focussing on navigation from the human proportion coupled with the ability to float if you need to I'll look into more sophisticated methods of camera animation in the next release.

wimve wrote:Wow looks great. Although not tested yet I have a question already: is it possible to include a "flightpath" ? So a predefined camera path.

For instance when you want to walk through several rooms it is hard to move around nicely with only the keyboard keys. But if you draw a line at the desired eyeheight which the camera has to follow this would be easier.

I haven't looked into this but it could be possible, but its sort of going in the opposite direction to what the plugin does currently. I'll elaborate a little.

First off, I think Rick Wilson's plugin FlightPath2 handles flight paths, or there's also SU Animate. Have you tried these plugins? This is what comes to mind when I think of implementing a flight path in the plugin, are you thinking of something similar or do you have something different in mind.

In my current internal build of the script, you can use it in combination with either Chris Fullmer's Camera Recorder or Pixero's version of Chris Fullmer's Camera Recorder to record the Camera's flight path whilst using the Camera Float Tool. In Pixero's version, you can then modify this path (ie. remove all the bumps from the flight path) and then produce a final animation from the revised flight path. I used this technique in the first video to get a 'more-smooth' animation through the model and to produce a video that is rendered with shadows (obviously navigating with the Camera Float Tool with shadows on will slow down your movements significantly).

If you notice at around the 42 second mark, I accidentally jump onto the ballustrade of the ramp. You should be able to edit this out using Pixero's version of Chris Fullmer's Camera Recorder. Also notice, that since I couldn't be bothered removing all the doors in the building, that I disable collision every time I want to pass through a door.

I'm also planning to add a different scale for looking up and down so you get better control whilst navigating through your model.

I think I missed something, I tried a test "float" everything was great and working real well until I ended up underneath my model, I could see that was going to happen. I see there is a toggle to maintain camera height, but I can't find a place to enter camera height. So far I like this plugin.

tspco wrote:I think I missed something, I tried a test "float" everything was great and working real well until I ended up underneath my model, I could see that was going to happen. I see there is a toggle to maintain camera height, but I can't find a place to enter camera height. So far I like this plugin.

Hi Ryan, I'm working on user input for camera height and field of view for the next version. In your case this would be an issue since camera height works by checking if there is any geometry below the camera position. Since you're underneath your model, there's no geometry, so there's no camera height, so you'll need to move the camera up until you're above the model. The default keys to move the camera up and down are shift and control respectively.

Also, you can modify or find out the keys for specific movement in Floating Camera by loading the controls dialog (click the icon in the toolbar that looks like a c-key).

After working with it again, I realized what happened I was over the model and as I was moving I was headed for the ground. Not sure how, I did a short video at a higher level, and other than I was not high enough to fly over my light poles and the camera bounced over them, it looked real good.As I was flying I could not manage to make nice sweeping curves, but that may come with practice.

Hi I wonder if this plugin still is work in progress or it is placed on a shelf somewhere? i have tried it and it feels promising, but I'm missing some features and bugg fixes. I'm playing around whit my playstation 3 controller and a program called GamePad Companion 3.2 and it works nicely for emulating mouse and keyboard for diffrent controllers and I'm thinking of using that together with this plugin. Thanx for anything that could help